


Two to Tango

by crossingwinter



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Blowjobs, F/M, Friends With Benefits, Friends to Lovers, me: how about a fun bj romp?, me: why are you like this??, reylo: ok but only if we throw in some unexpected angst before we end up essentially married
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-18
Updated: 2019-08-18
Packaged: 2020-09-06 22:27:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20298949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crossingwinter/pseuds/crossingwinter
Summary: Rey:I need to ask you something awkward.Ben:What’s up?Rey:Can I give you a blowjob?  Please?





	Two to Tango

**Author's Note:**

> thanks 2 jeeno for betaing the thing.

**Rey: **I need to ask you something awkward.  
  
**Ben: **What’s up?  
  
**Rey: **Can I give you a blowjob? Please?

Rey stares at her phone, as the little bubbles that indicate that Ben is trying to process a response to this question appear and disappear on the screen.

_ Don’t read too much into it. Please don’t read too much into it, _ she prays. But she also knows better than to expect that. 

It’s as she takes a deep breath and begins to type  _ never mind—it doesn’t matter _ when the words finally appear on her screen.

**Ben: **Where’s this coming from?

It took him a full five minutes to type out  _ Where’s this coming from? _

But she’ll take it.

**Rey: **Ok TMI but it’s that week of my pill cycle where I basically just really want to suck dick. Like a lot. And it doesn’t have to mean anything--friends with benefits sort of an offer—but I figured I’d shoot you a note before making more horrible choices on Tinder.

It takes another five minutes for him to reply.

**Ben: **Doesn’t friends with benefits never work?  
  
**Rey: **Worked fine for me and Finn until he got a girlfriend.

Rey likes Rose. She likes Rose a lot, actually. On top of that, she thinks that she’s good for Finn, that she gives Finn a spring in his step, makes him feel more...not grown up or mature but also somehow more grown up and mature. But she and Finn had had a really sweet deal going on for a few years there.

**Ben: **You used to suck Finn’s dick once a month?  
  
**Rey: **Yeah. So?  
  
**Ben: **I knew there was something going on between you two. 

Rey rolls her eyes on the phone and decides that she’s done texting. She calls Ben, who doesn’t pick up right away, but does before it goes to voicemail.

“Hello?”

“There was nothing going on. It wasn’t a relationship. Neither of us wanted it to be a relationship. I just sometimes get really fucking horny because hormones are like that and—as I said—better someone I know and trust than a mistake on Tinder.” Because she’d made mistakes on Tinder several times in the six months since Finn and Rose had gotten together. And she really would rather just—

Ben’s a friend. He’s a decent guy, though he does a really fucking impeccable job at hiding that from his parents, his uncle, her friends, his colleagues, and god if god is real which Rey’s never really been convinced of. But he listens to her when she’s upset and never makes the conversation about him, which is something she’s sure would surprise his parents, his uncle, her friends, his colleagues, and god if god is real.

“Ok what goes into this?” he says at last. “Is it just…”

“Just me sucking your dick for a few days every few weeks,” Rey replies cheerily.

“Shouldn’t I at least take you out to dinner first?” he asks dryly.

“No. That would imply this is transactional and it’s not transactional. This is you doing me a favor, no matter what you’re thinking.”

“Because you want to suck my dick?”

“Not your dick, Ben. Any dick. I’d stand on a freeway with a  _ giving out free blowjobs  _ sign if I thought it would do me good.”

“That’s an exaggeration.”

“It’s not, but I’ll let you think that if it makes you happy. Please? Can I?”

Ben doesn’t say anything for a full thirty seconds, which Rey is simultaneously surprised and unsurprised by. On the one hand, free blowjob with no strings attached. On the other hand—

It hadn’t ruined her friendship with Finn, though. It hadn’t really affected it at all. They’d always been close. It didn’t make them closer. And then she wasn’t making mistakes on Tinder.

But, as bar nights, movie nights, bowling nights, and one trip to a laser tag arena had shown Rey, Ben and Finn were very different people.

“Yeah, ok,” he says at last. “Should I come to you or do you want me to—”

“I can come over,” Rey says, looking around her house. It’s a mess, because she is perennially a mess. Ben always rolls his eyes about it whenever he’s in any space that is Rey’s space. “Give me a few minutes to put on pants.”

Again, Ben doesn’t reply right away. “Ok. Put on pants. I’ll see you in a few minutes.” Then he hangs up.

-

She gets to Ben’s thirty minutes later, spending the entire train ride staring out the window and imagining what his dick tastes like—not for the first time.

That’s the problem with this time of the month.

She imagines what  _ everyone’s _ dick tastes like.

She’d decided a while ago that Ben’s probably tastes good though. He showers like twice a day and she can’t really fathom him not being as meticulous about cleaning the rest of his body as he is about washing his hair. (Seriously—Rey has made some. Mistakes. On Tinder.)

And because Ben is a man who has been in her presence during the fourth row of her pill packet, she has thought about the taste of his dick.

Ben opens the door about fifteen seconds after she knocks and she brushes past him, barely taking in his breathy  _ hi _ and the fact that his sleeves are rolled up. “Take off your pants,” she says as she reaches his couch. Couch, she and Finn had always agreed, was better than bed. That was the mistake that people made with these arrangements. Part of why friends with benefits didn’t work was because people didn’t take the necessary precautions. 

Ben sort of drifts after her, looking more than a little dazed. He stands there in the doorway of his living room, watching her. “Pants off,” Rey commands him again.

“Aren’t you gonna sweet talk me first?” he asks. His arms are crossed over his chest and that henley he’s wearing really shows off the muscles in his chest.

“This is not a sweet talking situation,” Rey replies. “On the couch, pants off.”

He obeys, undoing his belt and unzipping his slacks—because of course he hadn’t changed out of his work clothes when he got home. Somehow she doesn’t think he owns a pair of sweatpants, or anything resembling athleisure wear. 

Somehow it doesn’t surprise her that he’s wearing tighty-whiteys...if that’s what you call them when they’re a sort of dark, heathery gray, and as he sits down on his couch she can see that he’s already starting to get hard. Good. Because she’s so fucking ready. She sits down on the ground. That’s something people get wrong a lot. What is it with the standing and kneeling? That’s rough on the knees—what are these people, babies with no kneecaps? She’ll take the nice firm padding of her rear while doing this, thanks. 

Good god his cock is long. And thick. 

She looks up at him and he’s watching her and he looks utterly terrified. “Relax,” she says. “I promise, I won’t bite it off.”

He makes a choked noise halfway between a  _ oh god  _ and a  _ please don’t joke about that _ and a  _ holy fuck you’re licking my dick _ because she is licking his dick. His skin is soft, and clean, and she feels him twitching against her tongue, lengthening towards her face and when she reaches the tip, she twirls her tongue over the head before taking him deep into her mouth and groaning.

Because yeah. That’s good. Nice and wide, and his crown against her cheek and his hands fisting on the couch next to his thighs. She looks up at him and his head has fallen back, his mouth is open and his eyes are squeezed shut and there’s this beautiful flush to his cheeks.

It’s probably the most relaxed she’s ever seen him—and he doesn’t exactly look relaxed right now. He looks like he’s actually really tense.

So she pulls him out of her mouth, watching a string of saliva dangle itself from the tip before she pumps him once or twice. “Relax,” she tells him. “You’re holding on. It’s ok. You can let go.”

He looks at her with an expression that practically screams  _ I am physically and psychologically incapable of forming words right now,  _ which is how Rey knows she’s doing a good job, so she licks him again, right along a vein, enjoying the heft of him, the way he bobs and twitches before she pulls him into her mouth again.

It’s hard to explain—the joy of sucking dick when all you want to do is suck dick. Rey’s humming happily to herself because quite candidly Ben’s dick is a pleasure to suck. It’s so responsive, and it doesn’t taste weird at all. It tastes really nice, actually. His precum isn’t too bitter or salty, while also not losing that wonderful tang that makes cum taste so good. 

She licks it up and brings her hands up and down his shaft, lubing him with her saliva, twisting oh so lightly as she goes because she knows that it feels good—Finn had fucking loved it when she did that, and the mistakes on Tinder had, to a man, complemented her on it. One of them had actually come immediately. Ben doesn’t though. But when she opens her eyes, it does sort of look like he’s holding on for dear life.

Because she’s pretty sure he is. 

So she takes matters into her own hands—or rather out of them—and relaxes her throat and sucks him straight down, nuzzling at the dark hairs at the base of his cock.

“Fucking hell, Rey,” he groans and she bobs her head along him, humming and yeah—there he goes, twitching and gasping and hot bitter cum filling her mouth while he goes unbelievably still.

She releases him with a light pop and swallows his jizz down. “You’re clean, right?” she asks him.

“Yeah,” he says. “When’s the last time you got tested?”

“I make the Tinder guys put on a condom before they come.”

“Yeah but—”

“A month and a half ago. And I’ll get tested again soon.”

“Ok,” he replies. “We should have talked about that first probably.”

“Yeah,” Rey agrees. She feels guilty. She hadn’t thought of it. Ben starts tucking himself back in his tighty-whiteys.

“How does this work?” he asks her. “You just text me and come over and then it’s wham, bam, thank you ma’am?”

“In a nutshell,” Rey shrugs.

“And you don’t ever want me to…”

Rey shrugs. “I mean, if you’re ever feeling hormonally compelled to eat pussy, I’ll happily help you out. But something tells me that’s less of an issue for you.”

His face does this funny thing, but then again, his face tends to do funny things when he’s trying to hide that he’s actually not a complete shit of a human being. 

“I mean...is that not what testosterone is?” She can’t tell if he’s deadpanning or not while he’s making that face. 

“Yeah, but would you stand on a freeway with a sign that says  _ eating pussy for free _ ?”

“Probably not.”

“I rest my case,” Rey says. She gets to her feet. “Glass of water?”

“Yeah, help yourself,” he says and she disappears into his kitchen. She downs the whole thing in one go, then heads back towards his living room and grabs her coat. 

“Anyway, thanks.”

“Yeah, my pleasure,” he replies. He looks a little winded.

“I’ll text you,” she says. “You’re free this week, yeah?”

“How long does this usually last?”

Rey pauses, considering. “Three days? Four?”

“And I really can’t get you dinner or anything?”

“It’s not transactional.”

“What if I’m going to get nachos in a few minutes and would like company? You get as much or as little as you like and I don’t offer to pay.”

Rey considers. “Yeah, that’s a friend thing. I could do nachos.”

“Cool. I’m gonna put my pants on again.”

-

Rey texts him later that week. 

**Rey: **All clean. Sorry about not having checked before we went.  
  
**Read** 2:45pm

It takes him another four hours to reply, but that doesn’t really surprise her. Ben’s rarely on his phone at work, and he works like a motherfucker.

**Ben: **Takes two to tango. I didn’t ask.  
  
**Ben: **Glad to hear you’re clear all the same.  
  


She nods.

She’d sucked him off three more times after that first night. They’d sort of figured that because they’d gone and fucked it up the first time, it couldn’t be more dangerous than that, right? (Rey had purposefully not texted Finn to find out. She loves having someone to go to for medical advice when she’s twisted her shoulder or has a funny cough or something, but the second it’s something like  _ what if I have an STI and gave it to Ben Solo  _ she’d prefer Finn not look down his nose at her about not having taken necessary precautions until absolutely necessary.) 

Anyway, no damage done.

**Ben: **You’re done for the next few weeks, right? You didn’t text last night.

She smiles. 

**Rey: **Heavily menstruating right now.  
  
**Read** 7:00pm

He replies an hour later.

**Ben: **Fortunately for you I feel hormonally obligated to eat women out when they’re menstruating.  
  
**Rey: **Lol  
  
**Ben: **I didn’t laugh at you when you showed me yours.  
  
**Rey: **You can’t be serious.  
  
**Ben: **I’m not, though I’ll confess curiosity.   
  
**Rey: **This isn’t a transactional thing. It’s either a hormonal favor or it’s nothing.  
  
**Ben: **You really are quite determined to push people away, aren’t you?  
  
**Rey: **You should talk.  
  
**Ben: **Low blow.  
  
**Rey: **I sucked your dick four times this week, I think I’m allowed.  
  
**Ben: **I thought it wasn’t transactional?

He has her there.

So she calls him.

“Sorry,” she says.

“You really didn’t have to call to say that.”

“Yeah, but I know shit’s raw and—”

“It’s fine,” he says. He sounds almost amused. She can imagine him there in his apartment. He’s wearing his tighty-whiteys and is sitting on the couch. He pauses briefly then says, “You’re a class act, you know.”

“A weird thing to say to a girl who’s apologizing for holding having sucked your dick against you.”

“It’s the truth,” he shrugs. “You didn’t need to call. But you did.”

“Forgive me for wanting to talk to people I care about when I think I’ve fucked up.”

“Exactly,” he says. “You don’t hide from it. You face it head on. You’re a class act. Take the fucking compliment.”

She bites her lip. “Thanks,” she mumbles.

“Anytime,” he says. Then he yawns. “You’re going to Poe’s thing, right? You’re the only person I actually like who’s going.”

“Nice thing to say about your friends,” she snorts.

“As if you never suspected it to be true. Besides, we both know they only tolerate me because of you.”

“Rose genuinely enjoys fighting you.”

“But does she like me?”

“Fair point,” Rey concedes. “Anyway, yes I’m going.”

“Do I get to be on your team?”

“I think it’s sorted randomly?”

But she ends up on Ben’s team anyway, which she’s relieved by, because she forgets that Poe’s friends are a little bro-y. Nice, but bro-y, and it’s not that she typically has a problem with either Poe’s friends, or their bro-yness, but she’s on her period and it means her patience is extremely thin.

Which suits Ben just fine, because he calls Snap a jackass in the first ten minutes and ends up muttering snide comments into his beer every time one of them opens their mouths for the remainder of the night. 

At first she’s laughing about it darkly—something she suspects she’ll regret when she’s not mad at how loudly Oddy is talking—but something unexpected happens after a few minutes.

She’s noticing the way that Ben’s hair is falling into his face and he keeps having to brush it back. She’s noticing that his lips are really plush looking and the way they curl into a contained smile is a bit disarming. She’s noticing the way that his hands look around his mug of beer—big and sturdy in a way she’s never really processed before. 

_ They’d feel good holding my boobs right now.  _ The errant thought is wildly unhelpful. Her boobs are mid-period right now, swollen and tender from the hormonal shifts in her body, and usually during her period, she ends up randomly holding them more because of it. And now her mind is conjuring up this image of Ben standing behind her, kissing the crook of her neck, holding her breasts while she runs her fingers through his hair and—

No.

No, no. 

_ Friends _ , not anything else.

This is an arrangement between friends, non-transactional, emotionless dick-sucking. She is not, not,  _ not _ supposed to be thinking about like...cuddling him or something.

She needs to get her shit in order, and is glad when Poe orders another round of beer and Ben excuses himself from the party, claiming a long week and a bit of a headache. 

She does her best to put him from her mind as she watches him go. Have his shoulders always been that broad? Had his torso always tapered like that down to narrow hips?

She swallows, and refills her beer, determined to drink these thoughts right out of her mind.

-

She’s tried really hard not to let those tipsy, period thoughts about Ben invade her mind once she settles into her next pill pack. The problem is that by the time she’s thought she’s gotten a handle on it, week four rolls around and when she’s halfway through a product update meeting and thinking how nice it’d be to suck Teedo’s dick, she opens up her messages app and sends Ben a text.

**Rey: **Tonight ok?  
  
**Read** 3:29pm

He doesn’t reply until 5pm, at which point, Rey is strongly considering Tinder. The fact that he replies right at 5pm tells her at least that he’s doing it as soon as he’s able. 

**Ben: **Yeah. Mine or yours?  
  
**Rey: **Mine’s a mess, so yours.  
  
**Read** 5:02pm

He’s already home when she arrives, once again still in his work clothes, but this time he knows what the deal is and she doesn’t have to tell him  _ couch  _ and  _ pants off _ because without a word he leads her into his living room, unbuckles his slacks and tugs down those tighty-whiteys. 

Rey barely has time to take in that his thighs are surprisingly muscular—she hadn’t noticed that last time—before he’s on her tongue and oh fuck yes she needed this. She wanted this. This feeling of something solid and stiff in her mouth. His skin is so smooth, his cum is a little tangier this time, but everything about this is right.

She’ll have to remember to tell him that.

His dick twitches and she cups his balls a little and he lets out a panting groan and his hand ends up in her hair, massaging her scalp, pulling her loose from the ponytail she’d been keeping it in at work.

That feels good. That feels really good, actually. She and Finn had always agreed that this was probably too far—an act of intimacy to be reserved for partnered-dick-sucking, not horomonal-favor-dick-sucking. But she’s not going to stop mid-blowjob to tell Ben not to do it, especially when it’s making her throat hitch a little around her breath, and her eyelids flutter shut and that really just—it feels so nice.

He comes a little too soon, and she swallows him down before getting to her feet. She frowns, staring at his floor.

“Everything ok?” he asks. He’s tucking his dick back into his underwear now, and she catches a glimpse of happy trail hair up a muscled lower belly. Her mind blanks out a little. “Rey?”

“Hairtie,” she says. 

“Oh, here,” and he hands it to her. He’d held it while she’d blown him. 

“Thanks,” she says, bending over and flipping her hair into a neatish ponytail. When she stands again, Ben’s eyes are glassy and he’s leaning against the back of his couch. His slacks are still around his ankle and his legs are hairier than she’d expected. She doesn’t know why this matters to her. She’s seen him in a swimsuit before, but somehow this is different. This and the happy trail and the way his hair falls into his face…

“Nachos again?” she hears herself asking.

“Sure,” he says and he bends forward to grab the waist of his pants and tug them up his legs, shimmying slightly on the couch and the way his hips are moving—Rey’s mouth goes dry. She wants to bury her face in his groin again, but he won’t be ready. 

But he probably will be again after nachos.

-

She can’t stop thinking about his dick. It’s a problem. It’s just big, and the skin is so smooth, and she likes the way his cum tastes and she likes getting nachos with him after. She and Finn had always gone for Chinese, which had been great, but nachos.  _ Nachos _ .

And the problem—once again—with this setup is that after her four days of sucking Ben’s dick are up, she ends up menstruating, crampy, bloated, swollen breasts, greasy hair and emotional—always emotional.

She finds herself combing through Ben’s Facebook page. Most of the pictures on there are ones she’s taken and tagged him in—candids where he’s like midway through talking, or group pics where his smile looks forced. He always has an arm around her in those pictures because he’s always standing next to her because she, alone of this group of friends, actually enjoys his company.

And now he’s letting her suck his dick.

Good level up on his end.

So why does she feel miserable?

(She knows the answer to this: it is her period. It is always her period. But she never remembers that until a few days later when her hormones are back to normal and she has one of those  _ wow I can’t believe how intensely I felt all of that  _ going on.)

She curls up in her bed, her hands on her own breasts because they’re heavy and swollen and she just wants hands on them and a demon thought crosses her brain.

_ You could text Ben and ask him to hold them. _

_ No, _ she argues with herself.  _ That’s not what we do. _

_ Why not? Your hormones make you want it? _

_ I have hands that work just fine,  _ she tells herself firmly, tossing onto her other side and holding them just to prove she can. She’s done this for years now. She’s fine. 

Ben’s hands are bigger than hers. Excessively big. Huge, really. Too big for her breasts. That would be making a mountain out of a molehill. 

But it makes her sad all the same and she gets up out of bed and goes into the kitchen to see if she has any chocolate ice cream left from the last time she was hormonal like this.

She doesn’t.

Sighing heavily, because she most certainly does not deserve this, she definitely definitely doesn’t deserve this, she goes to bed, doomed to no ice cream and holding her own breasts and hormonal misery.

-

The next time she sees Ben is at Finn’s birthday party. He gets there a little after her and, per usual, makes a beeline to her, weaving through the teenagers at the arcade to where they are standing chatting and waiting for some of Finn’s old work buddies to show up.

“Hey, happy birthday,” he says to Finn, extending a hand. Ben doesn’t hug. This is as close to a hug as he’s going to get.

“Thanks, man,” Finn replies, taking his hand and shaking it. “Ready for some tag?”

“Sure.” Ben takes a step back and he’s standing so close that Rey can sort of feel the heat of his arm even though they aren’t touching.

She shifts slightly, giving a little more space between them. While she doesn’t think anyone else would necessarily spot anything, she  _ had _ sucked Finn’s dick during her fourth row many times and if Finn even begins to suspect that she’s doing the same with Ben—well, the teasing’ll kill her.

Ben shifts, though and there it is again, the heat of his arm just ghosting over hers.

“Thanks for the invite,” Ben’s saying to Finn as though he hasn’t noticed that he keeps inching closer to Rey.

“Yeah, of course,” Finn says, glancing between the two of them.  _ Shit _ . Has he noticed? “I think I can say you’re one of the crew now, after a few years?”

Ben’s face does a thing, like he doesn’t quite know how to react to that, like his mind had flown, the way Rey’s had, to the concept that he’s Rey’s plus one, slowly integrating himself into the friend group, the way that Rose had done with Finn.

“I’m going to go grab a beer,” Rey says, deciding that everything’ll be easier if she isn’t standing right between the guy she used to blow hormonally and the guy she’s currently blowing hormonally.

And of course Ben follows her.

He follows her to the bar and has a beer with her, then follows her back to where they’re all waiting for Rose because Rose is running late with the cake. He is never more than an inch from her side and the thing is—the thing is—that would be fine. It would be fine, except she wants to run her fingers through his hair, wants him to rest a hand on her waist, but she doesn’t want anyone to think she might be blowing him, or doing anything with him at all.  _ Why not?  _ A voice whispers in her mind.  _ Would that be so bad? _

_ The whole problem is that that’s not what it is. Ben doesn’t think that’s what it is. _

_ Then why is he following you around right now? Why is he posturing with Finn every time Finn gets close? _

Because he is doing that. Every time Finn chats with Rey, Ben’s there, quiet and huge and inserting himself into conversations he would never have inserted himself into before. Like he needs to be there to make a mark. 

Or maybe she’s just imagining it. Ben’s always stuck to her at things like this. He’d said it himself, she’s the only person who actually really likes him here. But it leaves a weird taste in her mouth right now.

Especially because he keeps looking at her like they’re something more than they are. Not the friendly  _ you know what I mean  _ looks they’ve shared for years now, something else. Something that makes her stomach roll with anticipation and makes her mouth go dry and  _ no _ . No. They’re  _ friends _ . This isn’t what this is supposed to be. She’d said that explicitly when they’d started.

It’s  _ not _ what she signed up for. 

So no, she’s not going to be on his laser tag team, and yes, she’s going to shoot at him every chance she gets and stun him for fifteen seconds while he has to run and recharge.

“What the fuck?” he hisses at her the fifth time she does it, not even bothering to go back and recharge. Under the blacklight, his teeth sort of glow blue as he scowls at her. 

“No,  _ you  _ what the fuck,” Rey hisses at him, shooting at Paige with her lazer gun.

“What’s your problem tonight?” he demands.

“What’s  _ your _ problem tonight?” she snaps right back.

“Lover’s quarrel?” Poe deadpans, shooting Rey’s vest and knocking it out of commission.

“We’re  _ not _ lovers,” Rey growls at Poe at the same time that Ben gripes, “This isn’t a quarrel.”

But that doesn’t stop him from practically following her into the bathroom after that round, grabbing her arm so she can’t escape behind the gender-defining doors.

“No but seriously what the fuck?” he snaps at her.

“Why are you all over me tonight?” she replies.

“I’m not?” he looks blatantly confused.

“You really are.”

“I’m—”

She yanks her arm loose and pushes through the door and stays in there longer than she should. She doesn’t want to look at him and his confused puppy dog face and have to explain to him that maybe—just maybe—she’s projecting some of her hormonal bullshit onto his confused puppy dog face and that maybe, just maybe, friends with benefits isn’t working.

She stares at herself in the mirror for a long time after that thought hits her. 

_ You really are quite determined to push people away, aren’t you? _

And then there are tears welling in her eyes and she rubs at her face just as Rose pushes through the door.

“Rey?”

“Something in my eye,” Rey lies.

But Rose has looped her arm through Rey’s and whispers, “You fought with Ben? Do I need to go beat him up?”

“No, I—” she takes a deep breath. “It’s really nothing.”

Rose watches her carefully as she works to regain control over her face. 

“It’s me, not him,” Rey tells her. “I promise.”

“Ok,” Rose says slowly. Then, “He’s not worth crying over.”

_ Yes he is,  _ Rey wants to say.

Which is why she decides she’s not going to text him in two weeks when she’s on that row of pills.

When she steps out of the bathroom, she half expects him to be waiting for her, but he’s not.

He’s not even playing the next round of laser tag. 

He’s completely gone.

-

Rey makes a mistake on Tinder the first day she’s thinking about dicks again. She regrets it almost immediately. His dick is underwhelming and a bit sweaty but it serves the purpose. There are no nachos afterwards, no warm brown eyes.

She makes a mistake on Tinder the second day as well, and it’s even worse than the first because she sees a fucking open herpes sore when he’d said he was clean and nopes the fuck out so fast and he’s calling her a slut as she slams her way out of his apartment.

She tries not to cry about it on the train home but she does. Not because he’d called her a slut, but because she knows if she’d just texted Ben—

But no.

No, that’s the problem. The problem is that she was starting to think about him in a way that doesn’t work for something transactional, something impersonal. Even now, if she were to text him, she’d show up on his door, crying and the first thing he’d do would be to hug her—just hold her while the hormonal confusion and lust and ugh of it all washed over her and she’d feel safe and happy and—

And her phone is ringing in her hand, Ben’s name at the top of the screen.

“Hi,” she says, when she presses the phone to his ear.

“Ok, so what the fuck?” he asks her angrily. “Like what the fuck?”

“Excuse me?”

“First you’re all weird at Finn’s party, then you’re radio silence and now I’m just sitting here going, ok what did I actually do though? Because sure it’s creepy, but you said it was important so I made sure I didn’t have plans this week because I’m not a complete jagoff who’s going to leave you to fucking Tinder. So what the fuck did I do wrong?”

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” she says.

“Oh quit the crap,” he snaps. She imagines him pacing around his apartment, still in his work clothes. “You never don’t pick my team at laser tag.”

“Well maybe I didn’t like you breathing down my neck the way you were. This is supposed to be a friends thing. Not a—not a—”

“A what?” he snarls. 

“A you-know-what thing.”

“A no-I-don’t-know-what thing, because as far as I’m a-fucking-ware, I wasn’t breathing down your neck.”

“Yeah, you were.”

He doesn’t say anything for a long time. She hears him breathing heavily. She knows he’s counting to ten because he’s angry. And when he’s angry it’s because he’s hurting. And he goes to therapy, he’s learning how not to throw his computer out a window when he’s mad which is something he has done a non-zero number of times.

“Don’t push me away,” he says and it’s like there’s a different man on the other end of the phone now. “Please, Rey. I can take it from other people. I expect it from other people. I fucking deserve it most of the time. But I can’t bear it from you.”

“I’m not pushing you away,” she says automatically.

“Then what are you doing?” he asks and he sounds like he’s trying very hard not to cry this time. “Because I’m trying so hard not to be an asshole right now, and everything coming out of my lips is pure asshole, but I’m just—I—I don’t—”

“This was a mistake, Ben,” she tells him softly. “I don’t like making you angry or sad, and I don’t like being lonely and mopey and—”

“Wait what?” Ben cuts her off.

“It’s not what I want us to be. It’s not what we should be. We’re friends, Ben, and if this is too much—”

“What the fuck do you mean, lonely and mopey. Was I making you feel—?”

“You weren’t but I get lonely and mopey during my period and then suddenly I just—I wanted you there. And then when you were there it felt like too much and—and this was a mistake, ok? What you and I are—it’s not what Finn and I have.”

Ben’s silent again. For a good ten seconds.

“Yeah, ok.” His tone is numb. “Yeah, I get it.”

“Ben—” she begins.

“No, it’s fine,” he tells her. “It really is. Goodnight Rey. I’ll see you when I next see you.”

And now she wants to cry even more than she did leaving that asshole’s house.

Because if this thing with Ben was a mistake, this feels like a bigger one.

-

She does a thing she wouldn’t ordinarily do, and blames her period for it because if she’s mopey and lonely and close to tears, she’s sure as fuck going to blame her period.

She texts Ben.

**Rey: **Hi.  
  
**Rey: **Can we talk?  
  
**Read** 3:27pm

He doesn’t reply until close to 9pm.

**Ben: **Do we have more to say?  
  
**Rey: **I don’t know I hate this though.  
  
**Ben: **Look—you’re right. It was a mistake. Friends with benefits never work and we knew that going in. I’m not Finn. Let me lick my wounds.  
  
**Ben: **It’ll be ok.  
  
**Rey: **I didn’t want to hurt you.  
  
**Rey: **I didn’t want either of us to hurt.  
  
**Ben: **Yeah, well, I can’t get thoughts of you blowing me out of my head right now. It takes two to tango—can’t believe I didn’t see this one coming.  
  
**Rey: **(heh)  
  
**Read** 8:57pm

She sees those little bubbles appear as he tries to type. It takes him three minutes to say,

**Ben: **See, that shouldn’t have made me want to cry, but it did. So give me some time to lick my wounds.   
  
**Ben: **It’ll be ok.  
  
**Ben: **I know you didn’t want it to hurt, but it did a lot.  
  


Rey swallows, sends him a thumbs-up emoji, puts her phone away, and starts to cry.

-

She wakes up the next day to a long text from Ben.

**Ben: **I’m scared of pushing you away now. What if this is me pushing you away and we never come back from it because of that? What if I lose you completely because I didn’t have a brain in my head big enough to say “hey solo you dick why don’t you just fucking say no to this she’s your friend doesn’t matter that you think she’s got a nice smile.”   
  
**Ben: **You’re like the best friend I’ve ever had and I’m sitting her just going shit shit shit shit shit I’ve never been this scared before, Rey. I don’t want to breathe down your neck, but I don’t know what I want. Part of me just wants to hold you for a second to make sure you’re still there.

Rey swallows as she looks down at her phone. 

She reads the message twice. A third time. A fourth.

_ You think she’s got a nice smile. _

_ Part of me just wants to hold you for a second to make sure you’re still there. _

It’s Sunday, and she hasn’t left her bed, much less her apartment, since she got home on Friday night. She’s a mess with greasy hair and there’s a zit coming in on her chin but that doesn’t stop her from texting him.

**Rey: **Come over.  
  
**Read** 8:14am

Thirty minutes later, there’s a quiet knock on her front door. She clambers out of her bed and shuffles, still wrapped in her blanket, over to the door and it swings open.

Ben looks like he hasn’t slept. He’s scruffy, and there are dark circles under his eyes and his hair is also greasy—an anomaly for him since he washes it like four times an hour.

She doesn’t wait for him to say a thing, she just steps forward and presses her face against his chest and lets him put his arms around her. 

“I’m sorry,” she mumbles. 

“I’m sorry too,” he mumbles right back. They stand there in her doorway for a long while, neither of them saying anything, as though they’re unwilling for the moment to end and to return to the unhappy reality they’ve accidentally created for themselves.

“I have a bad idea,” Rey says quietly. 

“Yeah?” he asks her.

She pulls away slowly and looks up at him. His lips are chapped and when her gaze leaves them to return to his eyes, she sees he’s looking at her lips too.

“Yeah,” she breathes slowly.

She doesn’t really know who initiates it. She thinks it has to be her, because she’d been the one to claim the bad idea, but it could be him because he definitely bends himself down so that their lips can touch one another. 

And it’s the moment he’s kissing her that she realizes—she can’t remember the last time she was held, can’t remember the last time she was kissed. She’s blown a million fucking dicks in the past eight months but no one’s ever sighed into her mouth, and deepened the kiss and clung to her like they’re holding onto their life somehow.

She’s still kissing him when she takes a step back, leading him into her apartment with her lips. She’s still kissing him when she pulls him towards her bed. She kisses him and kisses him and kisses him, wrapped in her blanket, his hands on her face now. He keeps breathing her name into her lips like some sort of litany, like some sort of prayer. 

He doesn’t put his hands down her pants. In the back of her mind, she realizes he probably knows she’s menstruating. If he’d kept track of when the end of her fourth week was, he’d have probably kept track of when she’s menstruating and that’s the sort of weird inane detail that he keeps in his dumb, encyclopaedic mind. Or maybe he’s just content to kiss her because kissing her means they’re both here right now.

The kissing does slow. She doesn’t know how long it takes, but it does slow. 

“I don’t think this is a bad idea,” he whispers to her.

“Less bad than I thought,” she agrees, peeking up at him through her lashes. 

“I won’t push away if you don’t push away,” he says softly.

“Deal.” She smiles and watches a dopey grin spread across his face. “Stay a while? You look tired.”

“Didn’t sleep much the past few days,” he says carefully. She presses her lips to his nose. 

“Stay,” she repeats.

He pulls her close to his chest and sighs and his eyes flutter shut.

Then—

“Hey, I have a hormonal favor to ask,” she says and his eyes snap open and she can see that he doesn’t know if he’s right in what he’s expecting. She takes a deep breath. “Will you hold my boobs? They hurt like a motherfucker right now.”

His face softens and he nods and she twists her back to him so that he’s curled around her and sighs when his hands tentatively cup her breasts.

“Like this?”

“Perfect.”

**Author's Note:**

> kinks(h)ame me [here](https://linktr.ee/crossingwinter).
> 
> iOS formatting comes from [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6434845/chapters/14729722).


End file.
